Talk:Euro English

Is there really a "Euro English" per se?
By calling "Euro English" "a variety of English" it implies that, like other varieties of English or any other language, it has a reasonably definable vocabulary and grammar. It implies that one can decide to write a particular document in Euro English in preference to writing it in BBC British English or established U.S. English.

The examples given are simply common mistakes that non-native speakers of English make when speaking English, just as a native English speaker can be observed to use "embarazada" in Spanish to mean "embarrassed" when it means "pregnant", and and to say "Je suis plein" in French to indicate he is full when it really means "I am drunk". One might quip that the person speaks a sort of Anglo-Spanish or Anglo-French, but it doesn't follow that there is "a variety of Spanish" known as Anglo Spanish with a word, "embarazada", that means "pregnant". Likewise, unless there is a variety of English whose speakers have in common the use, not subject to correction, of "provide" to mean "foresee", then this is not a feature of a Euro English that is a discernible variety of English.

can you add any context to this? —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:15, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi,
 * We could write "varieties of English", like Philippine English, Quebec English, Singapore English. But even British English has varieties and local variations.
 * No, it's not only mistakes because some of those examples are widespread and accepted by everyone and even native English speakers from the UK/Ireland tend to adopt Euro English grammar/words! (Watch the documentary realized by the Open University) Also, there are not mistakes because non native English speakers in Europe only use those forms and consider them correct.
 * But you're right, this article is a stub that needs to be improved. There's still a debate among scholars whether Euro English is a local variety of English, a pidgin or just "broken English".
 * A455bcd9 (talk) 06:40, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I added a new reference: http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=135148&lang=en
 * It concludes that Euro-English is not (yet?) a variety of English.
 * A455bcd9 (talk) 19:46, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

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Influences, second paragraph?
I truly cannot make sense of this paragraph. It looks like a failed edit? Aaraak (talk) 08:46, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Examples, third paragraph
I see good examples of French in Euro English, but there are no examples of other Romance, Germanic, Slovak etc. languages being influences in Euro English. Add examples of how other languages add to Euro English? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pyrotechniks (talk • contribs) 20:19, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Predicting future?
While the UK was a member of the EU, Euro-English has been influenced and dominated by British English. With the withdrawal of the UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the EU, popularized as Brexit, the number of native English speaker is mostly automatically reducing to the Irish ones, giving eventually more room for romance languages

This feels like opinion, we can't know that Brexit "giving eventually more room for romance languages"

Also a bit odd to say "UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", United Kingdom of GB & NI maybe but not the other way around

--Zander Brown (talk) 22:25, 23 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree. Prognostication by one writer is still prognostication by one writer, not an assertion of established fact or a strongly supported conjecture about current reality. Our mention of it isn't informative and it doesn't belong here. I'm tempted to remove it but I'll probably await further comment.
 * As for the other thing, yes, that was plainly weird, especially since it wasn't the first mention of the UK in the span of two sentences, so I cut out the unnecessary part. Largoplazo (talk) 00:13, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Planify
The table here asserts that the verb "planify" is a Standard English word. I have certainly never heard it or seen it in writing before, and according to Google's Ngram viewer, it came into existence, at a very low level, around 1960. I suspect "planify" is itself a Euro-English construction. According to this article, the word "planification" "assumes the existence of an unusual verb planify." This makes me think both are EU-English coinages, rather than one developing from a pre-existing native English word. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/69699/11-examples-odd-dialect-called-eu-english Secondus2 (talk) 09:32, 13 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Not that I can speak for every form of English spoken in the world, but I surely don't recognize it as a word found in conventional English, and neither do the OED nor Merriam Webster Unabridged. I'd assume it comes from French speakers guessing at a verb from "planification". Largoplazo (talk) 13:10, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Vocabulary - Subsidiarity
Origin might be known: "... The OED adds that the term "subsidiarity" in English follows the early German usage of "Subsidiarität". More distantly, it is derived from the Latin verb subsidio (to aid or help), and the related noun subsidium (aid or assistance)." The footnote might be of interest: "Early German usage: Subsidiarität (1809 or earlier in legal use; 1931 in the context of Catholic social doctrine, in §80 of Rundschreiben über die gesellschaftliche Ordnung ("Encyclical concerning the societal order"), the German version of Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo anno (1931))"."

"European English" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect European English. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 23 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:26, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Confusion over plurals
The article mentions "Informations" and "competences", I could add "softwares" and "codes" and a long list of slightly confusing and contradictory rules around animal names.

The thing is, these aren't minor slip-ups that American/Australian/British/etc English speakers make, they are instantly recognisable as coming from EFL speakers, a bit like messing up articles and pronouns. The "rules" are horrible and governed far more by convention than logic, but that's how it is.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.217.22.199 (talk) 19:51, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

And "competences" is a poor example to use, we do pluralise that noun as "competencies", but I don't think the way in which we do it maps one to one with what the French do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.217.22.199 (talk) 19:56, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Scope of meaning
Some words such as 'actor,' 'axis' or 'agent' are given a meaning as wide as in European languages while their meaning would keep a narrower range in native English.

OK, well there's a reference for this, the statement is actually lifted verbatim from the article, but what use is it with out a practical example, or comparison of the meanings in English vs other languages? Why did someone put that in there without explaining ... what's the point! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.217.22.199 (talk) 21:09, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I think it's hard to explain, because some of these extended meanings have slipped into other varieties of English as well, especially through technical terms (things like actors in game theory, agents in programming, or compound terms like 'state actor'). The major difference seems to be that these words are used more casually in Euro English (though I'm no expert on this topic). TucanHolmes (talk) 22:37, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Is "Doer" a word that's actually used?
The title says it all. I've never read, heard, or seen anyone use this word. Please tell me if I'm wrong, otherwise I will replace it with a more suitable alternative soon. TucanHolmes (talk) 23:05, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree it's probably not the right word here, but it's definitely a word. You will often hear variations of "I'm more of a doer," but this implies less that you are the one who is doing a thing right now, and more refers to the fact that you are the kind of person who prefers doing things, rather than talking about them or planning them. The correct English word is in fact "executor," although this is not very commonly used outside of legal matters. As Euro English tends to be used by EU officials, I think it is appropriate here. Dantai Amakiir (talk) 19:42, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The question is moot because I removed the entry for "actor". The meaning that was given isn't a novel innovation in Euro English that needs to be explained to non-Euro audiences. It's been an ordinary meaning of the word in US and UK English for centuries, attested in writing at least a century before its first recorded use (in the Oxford English Dictionary) to refer to a theatrical performer. Largoplazo (talk) 20:58, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

To answer the original question, yes, but as a spoken colloquialism, never in written language. So it may be considered incorrect grammar but in common usage like "should of". Executor is possibly the right word, but the correct answer is we don't construct a sentence that way except when deliberately using non-standard English to make a point ... why say "I'm more the sort of person who wants to get things done!" when you can make the point in four words. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:1C00:E1C:3F00:61B5:DDF1:63BE:BF48 (talk) 20:02, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * For a word that is "never" used in written language, it sure does appear an awful lot in written language. Largoplazo (talk) 00:13, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Let's delete this article - it's flawed beyond repair
This article mixes completely different things: false friends and other typical mistakes of non-native speakers of English, the international English of Erasmus students, the jargon of EU Burocrats. The references, on closer inspection, do not prove that "Euro English" is an establish notion. -- Oisguad (talk) 21:36, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No. While this article might be flawed, the basic information in it isn't. The fact that — especially due to Brexit — most people in "continental" Europe (and especially in EU institutions) now speak a form of English that will be increasingly divergent from other varieties of English in the future is well-established (not just by the sources cited for the purpose of this article). In fact, that's how languages work. Simply discarding an article about an existing phenomenon because it has problems is not the way to go. (See also: WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM, and these articles: ) TucanHolmes  (talk) 21:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The article does mix different things, but the subject is legitimate and the article includes enough that's substantively relevant that I can't see a deletion discussion succeeding if it were nominated. However, the current content needs a lot of work, and a lot of it seems to be contributors' WP:OR as to whether this or that quirk would be considered "Euro English" by most people, rather than as "non-native speakers making typical mistakes". The entire Vocabulary section should go because it's rife with this, and it's completely unsourced. It's largely as though someone wrote a book of typical mistakes that English speakers make when speaking Spanish and dubbed it a new variety called it "Anglo Spanish". (If asked what I think determines whether a locution should be regarded as a mistake or as an element of a distinct variety of the language, I'd say it's whether people using the term, when they find out that it's incorrect usage according to standard English, stop using it, rather than saying, "This is how we [for some unspecified "we"] speak it.") Largoplazo (talk) 22:12, 23 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Sorry to necro here, but I more or less agree with Oisguad and Largoplazo. This article is an unencyclopedic Frankenstein of 3 different topics, which can be easily dissected from the references used.
 * It refers to a Euro-English as a hypothetical future standard variety of English that would emerge in Europe, as described in Ferguson (1982) and Décsy (1993), a sort of pan-European cousin of Singlish and Hinglish. This has obviously not happened, because as Mollin (2006) notes, English language teaching in Europe was standardised on British English and no indigenous variety has emerged in any official capacity. To do some quick bone-obvious original research, I'd say it would not be controversial to claim that a solid majority of young Europeans in 2024 (discounting the Francophones, Spaniards and maybe Italians) regularly consume native anglophone media, making any sort of independent standard Euro-English variety unwieldy and impossible. So Euro-English in this context should be at best confined in a History section, at worst jettisoned altogether.
 * It refers to Euro-English as specifically the English used between Place Luxembourg and Ambiorix, i.e. the working language of the European Union. This is basically just British English with EU-specific technical terms and a few borrowings from French, barely enough to even qualify as a jargon. In that sense the Glossary of European Union concepts, acronyms, and jargon page does a much better job at tackling EU jargon than this article. The references used for this concept are entirely from Brexit-era British tabloids or other online listicles, neither of which should qualify as references for what is ostensibly a serious linguistics article. This is joined by a few feverish wet dreams of French yellow press polemicists, with the latest being Bernard Cerquiglini's, 2024 "La langue anglaise n'existe pas. C’est du français mal prononcé" which, conceding that French will simply never replace English as the EU's lingua franca, dream of a new "EU English" which would at least be somehow different enough from British English to stick it one last time to les Rosbifs. This already toxic concoction that only half exists in reality is then nicely mixed with a few unrelated anecdotes of the funniest overheard botched English phrases by drunk junior MEP Assistants at Plux last night (see the whole we were five people at the party section) to create something that's absolutely not fit for any encyclopedia worth its name. This entire concept has to go, no ifs or buts, it's nothing more than a common Franco-British psycho-political mania with almost no basis in reality. It's honestly embarrassing this has been up for almost a decade now.
 * It refers to Euro-English as the organic appropriation of English by non-native speakers in continental Europe, with most studies so far apparently targeting Erasmus and Erasmus+ programmes where young people use English as a lingua franca (aka ELF). Forche 2012 is the only reference of substance used here, but a quick google search easily yields more papers on the topic like Cogo, Alessia. (2016). English as a Lingua Franca in Europe. IMHO this concept of Euro-English is what this article should be reoriented towards, if enough material can be found. Otherwise I would advise for the entire article to be folded in the English as a lingua franca article.
 * So in short, this article needs a complete rewrite to actually focus on Euro-English as a developing spoken/colloquial organic variety of English amongst young European professionals that are increasingly mobile within EU borders (see Bryła, P. (2015). The Impact of International Student Mobility on Subsequent Employment and Professional Career: A Large-scale Survey among Polish Former Erasmus Students) instead of a mish-mash of pseudo-encyclopedic ideas and concepts. Sadly I am neither proficient enough in linguistics or in writing Wikipedia articles to tackle something of that magnitude. I would however move for a consensus to at least slap a Cleanup rewrite template at the top of the page and jettison the Vocabulary section. Andro124 (talk) 01:41, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Not semantic widening, but semantic change, if anything.
"The English adjective eventual has undergone a semantic widening " is untrue. In English, 'eventually' means 'in the end' or 'finally' or close to that (maybe 'in the end or after a long time' ?). This is a complete *change* of meaning from 'possibly', not widening. In a widening, the meaning of 'possibly' would be retained and added to, and not lost, as has alleged by the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arctic Gazelle (talk • contribs) 08:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * You're correct. This is clear, as when non-native speakers use "eventually" in English to mean "possibly", even those of us who know that that's what the cognates in other languages mean receive it in English as an incorrect usage. I've edited it. Largoplazo (talk) 10:43, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Not a dialect, but a variety
I'm not a linguist, but if "Euro English" is based on common EU jargon, it's a variety at best (if it were actually codified, then standardized variety). People speaking this jargon come from all over EU and don't have any common "dialect" while using this jargon.

I personally wouldn't go as far as to call a mix of second-language mistakes, jargon and Basic English features some kind of "unified" variety (or dialect, as it currently stands), but I'm sure this was objected to before. We don't speak any kind of "Euro" English here, this is one huge misconception. Me and my family have different levels of English proficiency, and that doesn't make me speak a common dialect or variety of English as them, let alone someone on the other end of the continent. -Vipz (talk) 07:24, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Adding to this, it is also grouped under British English, and I can already tell you American media has stronger foothold in much of continental Europe. There are more similarities between speakers of the same language family branch (e.g. Slavic, Romance or Germanic) between different continents than between these branches within Europe. You might hear Romance speakers use "ze" for "the", but you can't hear that with Slavic speakers. You could rename this article into "English as a lingua franca in Europe" if you believe it deserves a separate article from English as a lingua franca. -Vipz (talk) 07:51, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I just took a look at the Vocabulary section... just because a word has a different cognate in another language doesn't make us use the same when speaking English. Do I look like speaking Euro English right now? Let me compose a sentence from this alleged unified Euro English: "I'm planification to hop over from salting my phone." -Vipz (talk) 08:10, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

English (Denmark)
Should the article talk about the locale English (Denmark)? iirc it was meant for europeans who wanted to keep their numbering, dates and money formats but also wanted to use English as the language 77.228.120.110 (talk) 07:53, 13 September 2023 (UTC)